Writers 
The Woman Who Stayed
There was a time when I looked at my husband and felt like I was looking at my enemy.
It is strange to say that now because, before all of this started, my husband was a very nice man.
He was the kind of man who would go to the market, buy foodstuff, cook, and help with house chores. He never had that mentality that because he was a man, everything in the house was for the woman to do. We loved each other very much.
Then something changed.
One night, my husband was sleeping and his phone was playing music. The music was disturbing me, so I picked up his phone to stop it.
I don't even remember exactly what made me check his WhatsApp. But I did.
I saw him chatting with someone else, and I thought he was cheating on me.
The next day, I confronted him.
At first, he apologized. Then he started defending himself and asked me why I had touched his phone.
I was angry.
I remember saying, "Am I hiding my phone from you? Why would you even ask me? Why would I touch your phone?"
He told me to leave his room.
I refused.
I was holding my own phone, and I told him he could check it because I had nothing to hide.
Then he took my phone and broke it.
I shouted, "Ah, why did you break my phone now?"
That was when he beat me and pushed me out of his room.
That was the first time.
The next day, he apologized and bought me another phone. I told him that if he ever did it again, I would leave his house.
He promised me he would never do it again.
But he did.
And it didn't happen only once.
There were times he hit me even when I was pregnant. I remember being seven or eight months pregnant and still experiencing it.
Each time, he would apologize. Each time, he would promise that it would never happen again.
But after a while, I stopped believing the promises.
I got to a point where I told myself, "I will leave your house before you kill me."
I was not pretending that everything was fine. I was not happy.
Sometimes when we argued, I talked back. I asked him, "What else can you do not to beat me?"
But inside me, I was tired.
There were times I looked at him and felt like I was looking at an enemy.
I felt like I was disappearing from my own body.
I was always thinking about how I would leave.
And I did leave.
There was a time I left the house with one of our children and went to my father's house.
My mother came, and we talked about everything.
My husband promised again that he would never hit me.
My brothers were angry. They told him that if he ever touched me again, they would have him arrested.
His own family did not support what he was doing either. His siblings and parents spoke to him about it. His mother confronted him.
My husband also respected and loved my mother very much, so when she spoke to him, he listened.
Then something else happened.
He went to church and heard a priest preach about men who beat their wives. Whatever the priest said that day really touched him.
One night, I went into his room and found him crying.
He knelt down and apologized to me.
He told me he regretted everything he had done. He said he should never have hit me.
Then he said something that stayed with me.
If we had an argument, he said, the best thing for him to do was to walk away from the room instead of hitting me.
That was different from the apologies I had heard before.
There was another time I had gone to my father's house because of what happened. My husband came there, apologized, and brought me and the children back home.
My father also noticed that something had changed in him.
After that, things really changed.
He has not hit me again.
He doesn't shout at me the way he used to. When he is angry, he tries to control himself.
Sometimes during an argument, he simply goes to his room, presses his phone, sings, smiles, or jokes instead of allowing the argument to become something else.
Sometimes he will even say something like, "Even if, for example, we have ten minutes a day, I'll not touch you again. Just carry on while and go."
And I will laugh.
He tells me that he regrets hitting me. He knows that what he did was wrong.
He has changed in different ways, not only in the way he handles anger. He pampers me and the children. He doesn't like having problems with me.
Sometimes when I bring up what happened in the past, he laughs and tells me to stop using his mistake against him.
And honestly, I laugh too.
Because I feel like I got my man back.
I got him back from wherever he had gone.
I also changed some things about myself. When I saw that he was angry, I learned to step away from the argument instead of continuing it. My mother advised me to do that, and I listened.
But I also learned something else: whatever a woman says during an argument, a man still has a choice not to raise his hand.
My changing the way I handled arguments did not make his violence my fault. He was responsible for what he did.
But I know my story is not everybody's story.
I am not advising a woman who is being beaten to stay and wait for her husband to change. Some men change. Some don't. Some women leave and never go back. Every situation is different.
I am only telling my own story.
I left. I came back. I watched the change for myself. And thankfully, the man I married is not the same man who used to raise his hand against me.
Today, we are living happily.
I am not advising anybody to stay.
I am only telling my own story.
